The Steampunk Approach to Science

It is a sad state of affairs that science has almost been driven off the popular consciousness. Intead, what you find is pseudoscience being distributed on TV through what is called “Infotainment”. The more outrageous the stories, the better. At the same time woo-woo quackery like magic sugar and magic water (a.k.a homeopathy), naturopathy and similar nonsense is on the rise.
This development is a disgrace. It tarnishes all of humanities achievements ever since the scientific revolution started in 1543.

It was sparked by the publication of two visionary and highly influential works that same year:

De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (On the fabric of the human body in seven books) and the much better known De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).

No, I am not providing links this time, in the spirit of this article: Do your own research. It is great fun to discover something new.

But coming back to all this pseudoscience Air Kraken discharge:

It is about as useful as and also about as sensical as the following statement and causes about as much pain:

What is needed here is a new approach for getting people interested in science again. Many people are scared of science, thinking it is too complicated. Others think it is just dry stuff with no application in real life. This is not really true. I think people just get this impression because they had bad science classes in school.

You know the kind, boring lesson, incompetent teacher who does not care and sometimes it is your own attitude:
You sit there in class, thinking “I’m never gonna need this…” and then you get bad grades and you don’t care and only the unpopular geeks and nerds excell in science.

It wasn’t always like this.
Back in the day, like the Victorian Age, science was electrifying. Scientist were respected, even held in awe. Everybody was interested in one ways or another. It was the Age of Discovery. Actually, today is the Age of Discovery, but most peolpe do not realize this. Science is growing in leaps and bounds. More discoveries have been made in this generation than in the entire history of the human race before!

Now, let’s take the enthusiasm of the Victorian Age, the less geeky approach to science and help others discover the Joy of Discovery. Carl Sagan was a genius when it came to that and like so many others, he left us far too early.

Check out his work on Youtube and other places on the ætherweb and tell others about it. Science is great. The piece of technology you are using to access this blog is applied science! The hot water in your shower in the morning is a result of applied science (metallurgy, physics, engineering to name a few). Science is part of everyday life. Realize it, be happy about it share the happieness!

And I leave you with one of the best and most entertaining videos on one particular subject I have ever seen:

Science took us to the moon and raised our life expectancy from 35 to 75! Pseudoscience and superstition gave us witch trials, blood-letting and, well, homeopathy.

Let’s make science fun again! Science is for everybody, not just for nerds and geeks.

Oh, and for a laugh on Friday, here is a brilliant piece by Dara O’Briain on quackery and science: